Screaming Trees
Sweet Oblivion Expanded
HNE
The record that took the Trees
closest to mainstream success.
The American
band’s sixth
studio album,
originally
released in
1992, Sweet Oblivion sold
300,000 copies on the back of
Nearly Lost You, the billowing
love song included on the
platinum-selling Singles
soundtrack. Post-Nevermind and
doubtless a beneficiary of that
album’s success too, anyone
involved in the nascent grunge
scene was aware of the influence
of Screaming Trees – their
melancholy, psychedelic hard
rock was influential in the sound
of early Soundgarden and Pearl
Jam, to mention two. Kurt
Cobain, meanwhile, was
somewhat in awe of singer and
friend Mark Lanegan’s honey-
voiced roar.
The greatest song on the Don
Fleming-produced Sweet
Oblivion is the mighty single
Dollar Bill, a rampaging slice of
lush Americana ripped straight
from the heart of nowhere.
This reissue includes a bonus
disc of tracks well worth hearing;
an acoustic version of Winter
Song featuring the slide guitar of
legendary Seattle ‘grunge’
producer Jack Endino, a cover of
a Thomas A Dorsey Song,
a Small Faces cover, a rousing
Black Sabbath version...
Screaming Trees prefigured near
all their peers.
Sweet Oblivion was followed,
four years too late, by the Trees’
brooding masterpiece and final
album, Dust. A great band.
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Everett TrueManfred Mann/
Manfred Mann
Chapter Three/
Manfred Mann’s
Earth Band
Radio Days Volumes 1-4
UMBRELLA
Three ages of Mann as heard
on the radio.
For all that he’s
sloppily
dismissed as
a pop poppet,
keyboard
player/bandleader Manfred
Mann’s dizzyingly catchy but
always intelligent slew of hits
concealed his British blues roots
and his evolution into a soft-rock
pioneer, via the vaguely jazzy
detour of Chapter Three. These
four two-CD volumes (alsoavailable separately) take in
a mostly unreleased assortment
of concerts, sessions, advertising
jingles, Top Of The Pops, Dylan
covers, interviews and Swedish
radio broadcasts. There would
have been more, had the BBC
kept tapes more diligently.
Singer Paul Jones gives Volume
One (5/10) its bluesy feel, which
sat far from comfortably on
a misplaced I Put A Spell On You.
Jones’s replacement Mike D’Abo
takes things in a whip-smart pop
direction on Volume Two (7/10)
which goes Kinks-ish on Semi-
Detached Suburban Mr James,
and Volume 3 (7/10) sees Mike
Hugg and Mann getting heavier
and jazzier with Chapter Three
in 1969 and ’70, despite the
keyboards-saturated So Sorry
Please and hook-laden Ski Full
Of Fitness Theme, which
cheerily sold Ski yoghurt.
Disappointingly, despite a heroic,
sprawling, 19-minute take on
Dylan’s 90-second Father Of Day
Father Of Night, Volume Four’s
Earth Band collection (6/10)
stops long before they really hit
their stride with 1976’s The
Roaring Silence.
John AizlewoodPaice Ashton
Lord
Malice In Wonderland
EARMUSIC
A pre-Whitesnake misfire in
1976 lands closer to the
target today.
After Deep
Purple Mark IV
split and before
joining
Whitesnake,
Jon Lord needed “a band I can
have a bloody good time in and
feel satisfied musically”. So he
called singer/pianist buddy Tony
Ashton, with whom he’d made
First Of The Big Bands in 1974.
Drummer Ian Paice, guitarist
Bernie Marsden, a brass section
and female backing singers then
turned Paice Ashton Lord into
a swinging jazz/blues/rock
hybrid. “It’s like Mad Dogs And
Englishmen”, Marsden observed,
referring to Joe Cocker’s
legendary ensemble, “but more
your good old English rock’n’roll”.
And he was spot-on. From the
belting Ghost Story, through the
Ian Dury-like Arabella, to
Ashton’s I’m Gonna Stop Drinking
Again – the greatest booze blues
not by Tom Waits – this album is
loaded with quality.
Still, the band folded during
sessions for a follow-up. From
those, eight bonus tracks
(previously on a 2001 reissue)
are frustratingly unfinished, butRory Gallagher
Blues CHESS/UNIVERSAL
Nothin’ but the blues. And like the black stuff he
supped, this is pure genius.T
wenty-four years after Rory
Gallagher’s passing, and following
the release of five albums of
material from the vaults – plus bonus
tracks added to reissues of his 15 studio
and live solo albums – a cynic might
expect to hear barrel-scraping on a new
36-track, three-CD set. But no. The
famously fussy Rory might have passed
on most of this, but his nephew Daniel
and brother/manager Donal (Daniel’s
father) can be satisfied that they have again
done the Cork man proud.
There’s a 15-track CD/two-disc vinyl
version of Blues available, but this full set is
aimed at completists, so unless you’re new
to Rory (in which case try the Big Guns or
Crest Of A Wave samplers) get this one. It’s
almost all ‘new’ material, with the three
discs, titled Electric Blues, Acoustic Blues
and Live Blues, bringing together material
(loosely) fitting those headings. The two
previously released tracks are from Rory’s
guest appearances on Muddy Waters’s
London Sessions (1971) and Lonnie
Donegan’s Puttin’ On The Style (’78). The rest
are out-takes, alternative versions, radio
sessions and in-concert performances.
Electric opens with a raucous
harmonica-led/piano-backed Don’t Start
Me Talking that was left off his ’82 album
Jinx (it was later re-recorded for Defender in
’99), then moves into a slow 12-bar Nothin’But The Devil (a song from the sessions for
1975’s Against The Grain which was
subsequently remade for Jinx). It’s a tribute
to his genius that Rory so often scrapped
material others would give their eye teeth
for. True, the versions here of As The Crow
Flies (tried for Tattoo in ’73) and Bullfrog
Blues (a ’72 radio session) have both been
bettered on live albums, but Leaving Town
Blues – a slow, moody stomp from a ’94
Peter Green tribute – indicates that Rory
was sometimes prepared to give some of
his best work to others.
Like the break he took when
performing live, Acoustic lowers
adrenaline levels to include standards he
never recorded formally, plus brilliant
alternative versions of favourites such as
Who’s That Coming and, especially, Secret
Agent, previously an out-and-out rocker
on Calling Card.
Finally, then, to Live – Rory’s natural
environment. From When My Baby She
Left Me (Glasgow ’82) and All Around Man
(from The Old Grey Whistle Test in ’76) to
Messin’ With The Kid (Sheffield ’77) and
guest live slots alongside Albert King,
Jack Bruce, Chris Barber... the breadth
and variety of material is matched only
by its energy.
A superb collection.
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Neil JeffriesRO
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GA
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EST
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HN(^) PR
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